Plans and Execution
by ArouraLeona
Summary: Levi makes a plan to win Gajeel's heart, or whatever part of him is up for grabs, but along the way manages to snag something that might be even more dangerous. Rated T for language. Chapters alternate POV Levi/Gajeel. Complete. **BONUS CHAPTER 2 POSTED**
1. Level One

Plan and Execution

Level One

She had never been stupid, and she was rarely impulsive. It was more her nature to develop a strategy. Her strengths were in her mind, not her body, so she could not fight as many of her friends fought. When others tried to break down walls, she rewrote them, recreated them, made them into doors. That was her power. That was her strength.

She did bash her head into obstacle.

Not that he was an obstacle. He was, in fact, the prize. The reward. Her prey; though, he was currently unaware of the fact, and about the most unpreylike person ever born. She let slip a small smile. But he was what she wanted, and she would have him.

It was … a surprise to her, at first, when fear had been replaced by forgiveness. By something nearer to pity or a sad understanding. He had done wrong. He had done a terrible thing. To her – yes – but more importantly, to those she cared dearly about, but he was repentant. And he was working hard for their guild now.

What he was doing for their Master was no secret to her. She was small and quiet. She heard and knew far more things that went on under the guild roof than anyone gave her credit for. And liked it that way. There were reasons she was presented for s-class exams, and there were reasons she was the leader of her team. Better reasons than the fact that she had breasts and her teammates were men; though, that sure didn't hurt. She smiled again.

So. She had forgiven him. He had changed. And then something new happened; the forgiveness deepened into affection. Which mutated into a crush. She couldn't stand it when he touched her, and he did touch her. He'd pat her head, emphasizing her short stature. He'd tug at her hair when he made fun of her reading all the time. Occasionally he'd lean over her shoulder and look at what she read when he called her bookworm. His breath would brush past her cheek.

The crush … the crush wasn't so much a crush anymore as it was an obsession. She wanted him, and she would have him. So a plan had been made. He could be playful. He acknowledged her presence. But most of the time he was away on missions. Or away for the Master. Being at the guild, being with his nakama, was not a priority for him. The plan would subtly change that. She had time.

It started with buttons. She laughed, and a few of her nakama who were eating lunch turned to see what was so funny. They returned to their meals when they saw her nose in the book. Ah the buttons. Before, every fastener on every piece of clothing she had was plastic. She changed that in one night.

Iron. All of them.

But it didn't stop with iron. A few judicious remarks to the gossipy barkeep and cook found that iron was what he needed to survive. Other metals were treats to him. More expensive, less filling maybe, but sweet or bitter. The flavors changed. So did her plan.

Then, over a few weeks, she began to incorporate a few small items into her wardrobe. A few shirts with iron and now steel rivets. New boots, leather, handmade with over two dozen small nails in each sole. Nothing flashy. Nothing overly gothic. Nothing that clashed with what she wore before, and most it she added herself, but she wanted metal to be present on her at all times.

Her glasses broke. That was a hard moment. A hard thing to do on purpose. She'd really liked those glasses, but they were a magic-made material with no metal in them at all, and they would not do. Those were replaced with nickle and copper. Beautiful work. The tiny screws at the joints made her think of the studs that lined his nose. Her fingers reached up to touch the frame now. She loved her new glasses. Loved how they absorbed the hot and the cold, how smooth they were to the touch, and how they reminded her of him. Hard, but beautiful.

That was part two or as she sometimes called it "level two". By level two he was sitting nearer to her when he was in the guild hall, and he spoke to her more often. His eyes would flick in her direction when he did not speak, and his nostrils flared when he wasn't looking. Almost. Almost, but not quite.

Then came level three. It was also pretty bad. It involved getting stabbed. She took a solitary mission. Getting away from her boys involved a complicated strategy of its own! It was easy for the others to understand why she went for the mission because the location involved a fairly famous library, and on paper the mission shouldn't have been too much for her.

In reality the mission wasn't too much for her either, but she needed the wound. She let herself slip twice, taking an avoidable stab wound in the shoulder and a slice across her collar bone. She finished the mission, her magic kept her blood in and the cuts clean, she took a particularly interesting spell book as a reward, and a healer had her set to rights in no time. But she came home a little shaky. A little 'scared'.

Her friends suggested armor for future missions, but she wasn't sure. 'Armor is so heavy!' she had said in a small, pained voice in the middle of the guild. It caught the attention of everyone present. Even him. _Especially_ him.

Several of the girls changed their collective mind. 'Not armor, then. How about chain mail?'

She had to fight back a grin. Success. She had her own chain mail shirt in minutes. She put it on, and she knew she had him by the panic she could see in his eyes from clear across the room.

Of course, she hadn't done enough to allow for the loner in him. She hadn't honestly thought he'd fall down on his knees before her after she put on the chain mail, but she thought it would captivate him enough to stay. And at that moment he _had_ seemed captivated.

She bit her lip and her smile disappeared. Instead she scowled at her book, the same book she'd gotten from that last job. It was as annoying as he was. It refused to be cracked. An obscure spell language that she _still_ could not decipher. She'd been trying the whole time he was away. He had been gone for over two weeks. Two weeks. That was unacceptable. She had three more levels of her plan already worked out to be executed! How could she move forward if he wasn't here? And why was this book besting her?

Her left hand slipped under her shirt, and she ran her fingers over the tiny links of the mail. She had grown to love it over the short time she'd worn it. The chiming sound it made, the indentations it left against her skin. And the fact that it had actually held off a sound-hammer blow during her last mission with her team. Like with the glasses, it was for him, and she loved it for him, but now it was also for her.

Refocusing on the book, she wove yet another spell of understanding over it. No effect. It seemed to concern a higher state, and she thought it might provide her with a way to increase her skills, but she would never get stronger if she could not crack the language.

With a sigh she closed her book and stretched. She'd been siting there for over five hours. If he was coming back today then … well, too bad. She was tired. She wanted a bath and sleep. In that order, of course.

* * *

><p>She blushed when she opened her apartment door. The others at the girls' dorm thought she'd moved out into her own place because she wanted her own bathroom. Her own bigger, private bathroom. Which wasn't <em>really<em> a lie. The big bathroom was very nice, but she really moved for the privacy. As soon as she decided on her plan. Sometimes she called her apartment "level zero" in her thoughts, which is why she always blushed when entering.

The apartment was for him. For them.

Actually, she was wrong; sometimes she _was_ stupid.

At least it was bigger. More room for her books.

Shaking her head at her own idiocy, she carefully placed the frustrating book on the shelf next to the door. For a brief moment her body stalled as the illuminated cover seemed to coil, but then the world righted itself. She made her way to the bath, stripping off her clothes as she went. As the tub – the copper tub, it was where she got the idea for her glasses – filled with hot water and steam floated around her, she pulled up her hair and turned on the music system.

Relaxation. That's what this called for; it was dammed hard work to woo a man.

Slipping into the water, she flinched. It was hotter than she intended, but already full. Scowling again, she crossed her arms over her breasts and walked nude to her kitchen. A tray of ice cubes later, and the water was bearable.

Relaxation.

Relax.

Re...

* * *

><p>Well that was stupid.<p>

She woke up, wet, in bed, and completely unaware of how she got there. She knew she hadn't been drinking, so she wasn't sure how she had just passed out like that. The wet and naked … she was in the bath … but how did she get from the bath to the bed? She honestly had no clue.

Cautiously, she stood up and walked back to the bathroom. The tub was still full. She blinked. Pulled the stopper. Got a towel. Dried off. Went back to bed.

What was going on?

The next morning she had a horrible, terrible hair day. Never sleep on your hair wet; everyone knows that little fact, but she had been too tired to manage a blow dryer, and she had to get to the guild. That flash the evening before from the book. She'd dreamed about it, the ribbons of color dancing, and she thought it might have something to do with why she fell asleep in the bath.

She needed the guild library. And she needed one of the big tables in the guildhall.

She dressed quickly, but not even her excitement over her book could make her forget levels one through four. She didn't know if he'd be back today, but she had a hard night. She wanted level four. Silk underwear embroidered with gold and silver wire is a lovely sort of luxury. The bra made her feel special, made her smile despite the lingering concern.

She picked up the book by the door. The cover remained static. Her lips pursed, she picked it up and walked to her guild, thinking hard.


	2. Level Two

Plan and Execution

Level Two

It was almost like she was doing it on purpose. Fucking torture, plain and simple, and he'd had more than enough. He'd been good. He'd done all the right things.

Shit.

He hardly knew what good was. But he knew he'd done what he could to turn things around. And then he stepped back. He let those two weak, ball-less, cocksuckers beat on him because he couldn't afford to fight back, but even he couldn't just sit and take punishment forever.

They'd tried to kill him for hurting her. If they knew what he wanted to do to her now, they'd do more than try.

And he'd let them because they'd be in the right. He fought for forgiveness because he needed it, but what he wanted now was far more than he deserved.

He was a man. A man too often surrounded by women who wore short skirts and shirts with low necklines. Ample amounts of cleavage and thigh were always on display for those hungry for visions of female flesh, and their guild had many varieties of the most perfect examples of womanhood. As pointed out before, he was a man; he responded to most of them. Shit, the one that was in armor all the damn time. With all the swords. It was less sexual with her and more animal, he supposed. She was like a walking kitchen. But damn she smelled hot.

Still, in the end it was the little one that got him. He had a bit of a thing for small stuff. Especially small stuff that was stronger than it looked. It's why he was so fond of that dammed cat for one. And nails and screws and nuts and bolts more than giant hammers and swords. He liked the way the little things felt in his hands.

He took to her for the same reason.

Wait, no. That was wrong. Not the hand thing; he liked her for the small but tough thing.

Though he imagined she'd feel very good in his hands. Very, very good.

He clenched those hands into tight fists. He was losing his grip on his control. For a little over a month now, he'd felt himself slipping. It started with the boots and his affinity for nails. It was the first thing he noticed, but after that he noticed everything else. The zippers. The coins. Normally everything on her was soft. And for the most part that was still true. Her clothes were still soft except for the random pieces of hard metal accents.

The headband. That was the first one that really kicked him in the teeth. The headband.

He was so used to the one she usually wore, but one day she turned up with this thin metal headband – delicate, fragile – that had a filigree design shaped like a butterfly on a flower on the right side, over her ear. It was made of tin and aluminum. He was almost certain she made it herself. Its scent was so light, and altered hers almost not at all, except … except it did. It did. He left early that day. Fled.

Then the glasses. Those buffoons she was always with broke those, and she laughed and told the bunny chick that it was actually lucky. She used them so much, it was an excuse to buy a really good pair. Something fancy and expensive.

And now he couldn't look at her when she read. But then he also had trouble not looking at her too. They looked good on her face. When she tucked them over her ear, or pushed them up the bridge of her nose.

Fuck. Then came the worst part. It was bad enough that she got hurt. Bad enough that she went away, alone, without even the morons to act as shields and take her blows for her. Bad enough that when she came back she smelled of blood and antiseptic.

The sword chick gave her armor. And she actually wore it. She put it on and actually wore that shit day after day after day.

With the chain mail she wore more clothing. Covered more of her body. She usually wore clothes like the other girls in the guild; revealing. Now, to cover the metal, she wore heavier outfits. That made it worse. No more tantalizing views of her back or hip or shoulder, just the scent of metal, sweat, and skin. That meant she was less of a draw for everyone but him. It was almost like she was doing it on purpose.

It was too much. He took the first job he could find on the board, and he hit the ground running.

The job wasn't the easiest one ever, thank the ever bleeding crap, but it had still ended after a week. Travel only took two days from the guild. He should have been back days ago, but he stalled out somewhere in between. He wasn't sure he should go back. He wasn't sure he _could_ go back. There were questions he had to answer for himself before … not that anything …

Dammit.

Questions.

Right then. Question one: Could he fulfill his job for the Master if he was so distracted by her? At the moment he was managing, but if he were forced to play the monster again, the Master would want him to keep his role in order to get information. Could he lie to her like that? Hurt her again?

No. He might manage distractions if loyalty and acting never came into play, but it would. The job demanded it of him. He might have to hurt her to save to guild or protect the guild or to do his job, and then he would fail.

So he couldn't go back. At least not while she was there. Long enough for an update with the Master and a look at the board. Late at night or very early in the morning. The Master would let him in, and the double dealing was a good excuse for sneaking around, after all.

When he announced that it was time to head back, his cat smirked. Freakin' cat. They went by train, which sucked hard nuts because trains made him hungrier than anything. Trains were nothing but metal tubes on metal lines, man. He got a hard on just thinking about trains.

Faster than walking though. Hella faster than a horse carriage, and less draining than a magic car that he had to feed himself. Fuck that. He forced himself to sleep on the train while his cat kept watch. It would keep the hunger at bay, and he had nothing else to do.

* * *

><p>They'd pulled into the station late. He'd grabbed dinner at a stall, and then wasted some time at his place, waiting for enough time to pass that he'd be certain all the stragglers and the last of the drunks had finally been kicked out of the guildhall. Then the only person left would be the Master, who had rooms in the back.<p>

Finally, at thirty past three in the morning, he felt it was time. He made his quiet way from shadow to shadow in the sleeping town and found the back entrance to the guild. He put his nose up against the lock and sniffed.

What a crappy lock. With a sly grin, his arm stretched and thinned until the tip was in the shape of a small keyhead. A simple turn and the door opened for him without any resistance at all. He supposed there were some magical protections in place as well, but as a mage of the guild, they did nothing to harm him.

It wasn't the first time he'd had to sneak into the Master's rooms, so he had no trouble finding them in the dark. The Master was unsurprisingly grouchy at being awoken, but understood that he was checking in because he intended to leave again straight away. The old man complained about unruly children who never stayed at home or came to visit often enough and muttered other things that he flat out ignored.

That was one reason he knew no one would be surprised if he were to disappear for a while. As long as he checked in, there were quite a few mages of the guild who didn't spend the majority of their time at the hall. He would not be the first.

After his Master waved him away, he snatched a light from the sideboard and went in search of the job wall. To stay on the road he would have to make money, and that meant work. The wall was vast and dotted with small pieces of paper advertising any number of opportunities. He narrowed his eyes and lifted his lantern to study each one.

His nostrils flared. He'd thought, at first, that the tiny bit of blood he smelled upon entering was just the normal amount of blood that was always in the hall from the shitload of fights that happened everyday. But it was too recent. The blood was fresh. Within the hour. It was too little to be anything fatal, but who had been bleeding here at this late hour?

He turned.

The main room was large. High ceilings and impressive square footage. At first the tang of blood had kept him from noticing anything else, but then the light of his lantern caught on a stack of books on one of the side tables.

Ah, shit.

Well, if she were still in the room, she would have said something. So she must have left when she hurt herself. But … he took a deeper breath, and there it was. The metal. Her chain mail shirt. The headband. Soft hints of gold and silver. Jewelry? He couldn't remember her wearing gold jewelery. Her hair. And the blood.

He didn't even remember running across the room. One second he was by the wall, the next he was at her side. Her head was on the table, and in the gloom she appeared to have fallen asleep surrounded by her books. For a brief moment, he thought so as well. He took a step back to keep from waking her.

Then he remembered the blood. And saw that her eyes were open and staring; completely vacant.

Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!

He put a hand on her shoulder and called her name. It was rare that he said her actual name aloud. It tasted strange in his mouth. Like fear. She did not respond. He stood back and yelled for the Master. Roared. The old man would come.

Her hand was on an opened book, fingers splayed. Something tickled his memory about the book, but it was nothing immediate so he ignored it. The angle looked uncomfortable, so he tried to move her hand, close the book, but she was caught. The hand was connected to the book.

That was it, then. That was it.

He took a deep breath. The blood, where was it coming from? He leaned in closer, ignoring the faint and inappropriate thrill that traveled up his spine as he put his nose close to vital but covered areas. Nothing. He could smell it, but it was hidden. He moved his nose to her throat, and that was closer. Up further … yes, there. Her ear. The ear pressed to the table.

With a gentle hand, he lifted her head off the table to take a look. Blood had leaked from her right ear. It was still tacky, not yet completely dry.

The old man was there, tiredly demanding to know the situation. As he explained, any signs of exhaustion from the Master evaporated. Determination replaced sleepiness, and the Master told him to stay by her while he woke the others.

If a book had caught her, neither he or the Master would be of any use.

It wasn't the whole guild, but it sure felt like it. The two lackeys from her team. The firebreathing hothead and his team (bunny-girl was a book nerd too, he learned, and he already knew the two girls were close). The kid and her cat, which actually made perfect sense, since she could heal. And the only other enchanter that used script.

Who quickly professed his own uselessness. The green-haired bastard told them that he wrote his enchantments based on a set of three languages, the actors at play, and the environment. He didn't work with the ancient scripts in the way that she did, and he wasn't a script breaker.

The kid didn't have any luck either. She was able to fix the ruptured eardrum, but told them that there wasn't anything else wrong with her health. Which was hard to listen to when those blank eyes were staring at them like that.

He stood and told them that if she was going to be unconscious for a while, she might as well be more comfortable. Trying not to upset any of her other books, he lifted her off of the bench (mystery book still attached to her hand), and carried her to one of the spare bedrooms, all of the others following him around like a gaggle of ducklings.

He had touched her before. Playfully, jokingly, and during the exam, to help her up cliffs. She was never heavy, but now she was especially light. Empty almost. He looked at her face, slack and emotionless, and clenched his teeth hard.

What the hell was going on?

* * *

><p>They'd been talking for hours. Various guild members had come and gone. The Master had called for a better healer. The green-haired bastard had tried writing new enchantments of waking and freedom, but neither had worked. The bunny-girl was at the stack of books in the main room trying to figure out what was going on when she collapsed.<p>

Morning had come. The guild opened, and most people emptied from the room for food and to gather their thoughts.

Only he hadn't been able to leave.

Another hour went by and the kid and her cat joined him. That was fine. They were quiet. His cat was still there. He'd forgotten. His cat was quiet too.

Then he smelled blood again and the kid jumped up an ran for the bed. She threw back the blanket covering the unconscious woman, and lifted the hem of her short skirt. A long, clean wound had formed there from nothing. A slice from high on her thigh, near her hipbone, to inches above her knees. They'd both been sitting there and nothing had come in to hurt her, but obviously something in her head or in that book had.

That damn book. That bloody fucking book.

The kid went to heal the wound and he stopped her for a moment. People were returning to the room, confused, scared, but he ignored them all. He put his nose next to her thigh, next to the blood. The wound was straight. Some of the skin had peeled back as the angle changed slightly, but - for a cut - it was straight. Sliced clean. Sharp.

It was a sword. And it smelled of bronze. He looked at the book again. No one used bronze swords anymore. Habbi and Rota in the south and north used bronze swords thousands and thousands of years ago. He started talking, speaking his thoughts out loud without wondering if he was making any sense at all. Habbi, he told them, used animal and plant symbols to write. Rota used abstract symbols as letters.

His dragon had horded many old weapons from the Habbiti and Rotan empires, and he had seen the writing before, etched into metal. He hadn't recognized it handwritten and on paper at first, but now he was sure. The book was Rotan, it had to be, and that's what they had to find: Someone who knew enough about Rotan magic to save her.

Because he couldn't.

A sharp-edged dagger of panic slipped through his blood vessels and made its home in his heart. Pain like he'd never felt before. He could not save her. What did that mean?

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Looks like this might get more complicated than I planned. Still, I hope you enjoy. Feel free to point out simple grammatical errors, but understand that stylistically I will sometimes use very informal grammar for a reason. Also feel free to comment on plot. Please, R and R. Thank you.


	3. Level Three

Plans and Execution

Level 3

Green grass as far as the eye can see bordered by a sapphire blue ocean. Above was a wide expanse of never-ending sky, soft, and punctuated here and there with fluffy, white clouds.

Had she died? Had the book killed her?

She was still wearing what she had worn earlier in the day when she went to the guild. She touched the fabric and metal as a way to ground herself in the odd place. She remembered picking out each piece of clothing that morning before going to research the book. She remembered why she had picked out certain articles of clothing. She still wore everything. Even the gold and silver panties. The book had not come with her.

Memory. That was important.

The book was old and not about spells or power, but a history, a biography, of a woman who lived so long ago that the world knew nothing of her people. It was a copy of a copy of a copy, made by the daughters and granddaughters of the daughters and granddaughters of the woman whose story flowed in those worn pages. The copy was old, and the story itself was ancient beyond her imagining.

**History is three things. **Words bellowed through her. Her mind. Her flesh. Her ears. Did she hear them or experience them? Those words existed, that she would not question. **History is three things,** the words repeated. **It is written; it is lived.**

She fell to her knees on the green grass shaking. She wanted to cry – she should have been crying – but she didn't cry. The power in those words exhausted her. It was like her magic of solid script, but concentrated into something vastly more sophisticated. She created words of fire and ice, wrote walls and water … these words were being and doctrine. Too much for bones and skin to contain.

If she could speak this feeling with her magic, and make it form a solid word before her, that word would be "truth". Twelve stories high and a mile wide, it would stand in defiance of any who doubted its existence.

Truth.

History is written. History is lived. The two are not always the same. The third option would be the person who both lives and writes.

The scenery changed. The sun descended and the moon conquered the sky. Stars spilled over the black in a haphazard array of diamonds and velvet. Tears welled up in her eyes. She'd never seen a sky so perfect.

The sun returned, red in its morning glory. Grass grew long. Then trees sprouted. Grew tall. Humans came. Cut them down. Built fires. Some left. More came. There was snow and not snow. Flowers and not flowers. Wood was cut again. Used for fire. For houses.

More humans came. Bigger houses, more wood. Stone was added.

More humans came, but this time there was war. Wood was taken for weapons, bows and arrows, ax handles, and spears. Wood was taken for the torches to light fires against the enemy. Wood was taken for the forges.

A woman appeared. Sweat rolled down her skin; though, her breath billowed with the cold. She gathered an armful of firewood and returned to her forge. Her mouth moved over words that could not be heard, and she made silent grunts as she hammered weapons of war into shape.

The guildmage from the future (who may or may not be dead, she still wasn't sure) observed the passing of time with some curiosity. Was this actual history, or a retelling by the book's spell? Ages slipped by as she watched – more generations than she was able to count – when finally time slowed around one tiny infant girl; daughter to the blacksmith.

There, she thought. There she is. The woman whose life is tied up in the book. The woman whose magic and whose descendants' magic has brought me here. The baby. Swaddled in clean linen. Rosy cheeked with a bath and her screams for food.

The child was presented to another woman, older, who wore a long white dress, embroidered with gold and silver. The old woman took the child, removed the swaddling cloth, and dressed her in clothing similar to her own. A long white dress that fell far past the baby's feet, dotted everywhere with gold and silver thread.

The baby grew. And as she grew, so did her dresses of silver and gold. And the baby learned. Some magic, yes, but what she was surpassed the bounds of magic. Delved into its limitations. She was a priestess. Presented humans and mages with a path to take once magic had run its course, and showed them how to bolster their magic and their strength with the power of their souls.

She read the moods of the land and sea and sky, and wrote them upon the walls of her shrine house. She stood in the rain and let it sink into her skin. Drank in sunlight and moonlight. All of it she took to her people to help them plant and harvest food, to help them protect and raise their families, to help them grow as a community. She was the earth. She was the sky.

Then she was pregnant. Time was moving so rapidly that the mage had managed to miss the conception. Even the meeting with the man who helped to conceive the child. There were arguments. Beatings. There were supposed to be no men for her. Even for however brief she had him, this man soiled her, so she was thrown out of her shrine. Denounced. Shunned.

The words of the world she had written on the walls for years melted in her absence. Her clothes were torn until she was left with nothing but a scrap of the once glorious fabric as she huddled naked in the woods. Hoping for the earth and her slight magic to protect her.

And the book. The book he had left for her.

Through the months and years of suffering, it was revealed to her that the fallen priestess knew her man for no more than a week. A magician and a peddler of arcane texts. As the woman, heavy with child, created a shelter, she grumbled about him and his leaving. Not that he knew about the baby. He didn't.

She gave birth alone on an earthen floor, looking up at a roof made of twigs and leaves. Through the many holes she could see the night sky, and though she gave birth alone, she did not give birth without help. Her magic, and the power of nature, rose up to guide her daughter from her womb.

The swaddling cloth for this child was rough, and there was no beautiful dress. But the former priestess passed on to her daughter that lasting patch of silver and gold, a memory of her past, and the legacy of her daughter's birth.

Time again passed swiftly. The daughter was standing on the threshold of puberty, and men entered their forest. The mother was not yet old, the daughter not still a child, and the men thought to take their due. But both females were filled with the power of the earth and sky. They fought, and they won, but the mother took great wounds from the men's swords.

In the mother's desire to protect her daughter, no thought was given to her own health. The long gash on her thigh sliced through an artery. As her daughter rested and did not notice, the mother found her book. She could with her slight magic heal herself of the life-taking wound, but the time had come. She had done nothing but hold her daughter back with her own fear and her own shame.

Hand on the book; the book where she had written her memories. Where she wrote her name, her daughter's name, and the name of the man who helped create that life. The mother now forged her spirit into those pages. Each drop of blood that escaped her veins became ink for the page. Life was written as life was taken.

She slept with her head next to the book.

She died with her head next to the book.

**History is three things.** The book told the daughter as the daughter grieved. **Life is only one. Don't be only words on a page, my darling. Go rejoin the world I kept you from. Write your story next to mine, but live your life. Don't flee from it as I did.**

The daughter did as her mother's book told her. As she died, the book was given to her daughter, and so on and so forth. On through the generations the book was carried. As it began to fall apart, magical copies were made to transplant the words and spirit of the text into a new binding of pages, but copies are never perfect. Little by little it warped. Instead of pouring outwards, a message for readers, it trapped in, sucking the story of writers.

Give and take. Take and give.

* * *

><p>The endless green grass had returned. The blue ocean. The soft sky. What now? Was she supposed to write her own story, her own history, and then die? She wasn't ready! She didn't want to!<p>

Traps are nothing but barriers, and she was good with barriers. And the initial spell was one of writing, and that was her feast and fowl. The warping happened over an extremely long period of time, but since time seemingly worked differently in this place, she shouldn't need as long to counteract the magical decay of the bond.

Then there were the perimeters. The book wouldn't have trapped just anyone. It had been in a library before it came to her, after all! The first … the first perimeter must be sex. The book took only females. The second was likely age. The age the mother was when she first received the book from her lover, or when she first became pregnant, or gave birth. The age wouldn't be exact, but as long as a woman was old enough (and young enough) to bear children, the book would recognize her.

Okay, she thought. Okay. Getting somewhere. What next?

Magic, of course. No one without magic could access the book's true depths. And a certain kind of magic; scripts and runes and enchantments. Which wasn't as limiting as it should be since those were exactly the kind of people who would be interested in the book in the first place. Exactly the kind of people who would fall into the trap.

Of course the trap wasn't deliberate. She had to remember, this wasn't purposefully written. Century upon centuries of women had poured their spirits into the text, and the warping was clearly unconscious.

Regret.

'History is three things; Life is only one,' was the message the mother left for the daughter. The meaning was clear. You can write history, but a life is only life if actually lived. So a common thread throughout would be the regret of a life not lived to the fullest.

And who doesn't feel _that_? Everyone holds back on something. Though she was forced to admit that she probably gave herself up to life less than most. Take the long, complicated deception intended to win her the affections of the iron dragon slayer? Each layer of each level just put off what would eventually have to be done. She would have to go up and say to him, "I like you. I want you. I love you. I need you." And then face the harsh reality that it was up to _him_ to respond.

If she were busy thinking of plans and tricks, she didn't have to worry about that part. About the part where he told her 'no'. Where he said he wasn't interested. That she was too small. Too weak. Too annoying. That the metal she wore was intriguing, but after that was gone, what was there to be interested in?

Yeah. She knew a little something about regret.

That could be another tie; men. It was a man who gave the woman the book in the first place. Made her a mother. And it was men who killed her; who forced her to stuff her memory into the pages. Daughters and granddaughters all had memories full of men who lifted them up and brought them down. But the book's creation was started by a woman's concern over a man.

She had also been driven to the book by a man. She went on the mission and won the book as part of her scheme for him. She delved into studying it as a way to forget that he wasn't near. There was a man in her life that naggled at her brain. And that was another layer that would have to be broken.

And then the last piece. The final tie. "Gold and silver," she whispered to the beautiful scenery. The book had reached for her the night before. Had touched her mind in the bath. Had stalked her dreams. But it only managed to take her when her magic was weakened after a day of working while wearing gold and silver on her body.

Maybe gold and silver wasn't necessary. It almost took her before, after all. Probably a necklace or earrings would work just as well, but the fact that she was wearing gold and silver _cloth_. The book had to take her. She fit the mold of its desires perfectly. Though she wasn't a descendant of its first author, she was certainly a daughter of its intent.

And the book wanted her story.

How did she tell that story without dying as the others had? And then how did she escape to get back and embrace the life she'd been avoiding.

History is three things. Life is only one.

She sat on the grass and began to make plans.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Thank you, all who have posted comments so far. I appreciate it very much. I know the style is odd, but I hope you stick with it. I'll do what I can to make it worth the time you spend reading. Again, if you would please leave a review. Thanks!


	4. Level Four

Plans and Execution

Level Four

He was torn. He knew almost nothing about the Rotan empire or its magic, but even knowing of its existence was rare. He could go and try to find out how to save her, but that meant leaving her. To find a mage with the knowledge and skill to unravel an ancient Rotan curse … he wasn't entirely certain such a person actually existed. But the word had gone out.

On guild message boards all over the country, her plight was a job. For a guild that had done so many jobs for others, it was a weird feeling to be the desperate client. He'd almost killed the others when they talked about what price to offer. What price? What _price_?

But if they offered too much everyone would come, too little and the hypothetical expert would not feel that the job was worth their efforts. They knew what they were doing when they debated the pricing and wording of the job, but it set him on edge.

His sharp teeth tore into the scraps of iron the devilish barmaid brought him for his supper. That would be the one and only perk of this whole thing. Food delivery. He sat, unmoving, at her bedside, and every few hours someone brought him food and drink.

Newbie kid had stayed with them the night before, but hadn't been able to make it the whole night before falling asleep. He took pity on the pipsqueak and tossed her beside the bookworm. It let him watch over them both without even having to move his head.

All because of a fuckin' book.

He'd had deadly serious talk with the Master, the green-haired useless fuckass enchanter moron, and a few of the other older ones about taking off her hand. The idea was, green-haired fuckass told them all, that the hand was the gateway, so if the hand were removed the spell would end.

Everyone thought in quiet for a moment, but he couldn't stand it; he interrupted their thought with a derisive snort. Even if it _did_ end the spell, which they couldn't be certain of, there was no guarantee that "end" equaled "come out of it alive". Far more likely that "end" was "dead" or "stuck forever in the damn book" Why not, he suggested, cut off her head? Since that's where the magic had obviously taken root. That would deal with the shit right and good.

His dark voice chilled the blood of every living creature in the room, and his red eyes went hard. Don't let panic make you fucking stupid, he growled.

Then he'd crossed his arms and glared at every dammed one of them. If it were the only way to save her life, he'd cut off her blasted hand himself (it wasn't her writing hand, so he thought she'd forgive him someday), but you didn't start cutting off body parts because of guesswork. Stupid fuckass.

Then he smelled it again. A wordless yell was torn from his throat as he rushed back into her room and tore off her blankets. That same wound. That same sword wound on the exact same part of her thigh as the day before. The newbie had healed it, he'd watched her do it, but it was back. Same cut. Same smell of bronze.

Bloody rotten, corpse fucking hell!

He sunk heavily into the chair he claimed and watched as others with the skill to do so healed her. Maybe this was fate or karma or some fucked up, well deserved shit like that. She was the most normal, wonderful, beautiful, and incredible thing to ever happen to his life. She was brilliant and beautiful, but their guild was filled with smart and attractive women. It was what she _wasn't_ that made her stand out; she wasn't crazy. She wasn't obsessive. She wasn't gloomy or single minded.

She was calm, cheerful, clever, and perfect. Things like that didn't last. And sure as shit weren't meant for fuckups like him.

Friend, sure. He could be her friend. Her companion. Her _nakama. _But now he wanted to be her savior, and the world was laughing in his face. The world was busting a gut at the very thought of him imaging a moment of something pure wrapped around the filth of him.

Somehow, he felt that this had to be his fault. She smelled to him like bronze. Like silver. Like gold. Like skin. Like sleep. Like something he could never touch but wanted regardless.

* * *

><p>Everyday after that the sword wound reappeared on her leg. She was cut, healed, and then cut again in 20 hour intervals. No question that the injury was important, but watching her face the same thing over and over for a week sealed it.<p>

He endured all the members of the guild coming through the room. Checking on her. Asking how she was. Her teammates he could not question. The Master and her close friends …. and the healers, of course. Everyone else he glared out of the room.

No one told him he had no right to stay. And he was waiting for it to happen. The only things they had between them were the pain, and the exam partnership. On the surface there was nothing to say he could say who stayed and who didn't, but no one kicked him out. And no one argued when he glared.

Day three and day five both saw people answering the advertisement, but none of the three mages could wake her. Two were script mages less powerful than the green-haired fuckass. The last had some knowledge of the Rotan language.

From that they learned that the book was not spells, but a religious history of the earth mother - a great goddess of the Rotan people - and her mortal daughters. It wasn't about power, but in fact was made by power. And for some reason that power had claimed the bookworm as part of itself. A mortal daughter of the goddess of the earth.

Interesting shit, sure, but it didn't do a bloody thing to get her out of those pages and back into her own head.

Script based enchanters and a few others were brought back in and given the new information. More discussions were held, and cords of symbols were wrapped around her. Trying to remind her that she was not, in fact, a daughter of the earth goddess, but Levi McGarden, a mage of Fairy Tail.

It didn't work. Either she hadn't forgotten and the reminding was unnecessary and unimportant, or she was so far gone that the reminder stimulated nothing.

They really were a bunch of idiots. What was it with enchanters? They all did their planning in advance. Huge big flashy plans. Not that he minded some balls-out flashing, but when you get a sound kick in the nuts it's time to try something different. They stand there shocked, surprised that being kneed in the balls wasn't figured into their the plan. Tactics. These enchanters were embarrassing when it came to tactics.

It wasn't her that needed reminding, not _her_ that thought she was some earth goddess princess. It was the book. It had always been the book. 'Cast,' he had told them with great scorn, 'your little reminder on the book.'

And so they did. Unlike with her, something actually happened when the enchantment touched the binding. It caught fire. A fire that quickly spread to the other magicians in the room.

That kept the enchanters away for two whole days. No one saw her but him, the healers, and her teammates. But after day five, he started locking the door after the healers finished with her leg. He was tired of worrying about the in and out all the time. It was hard enough worrying about her being in danger from inside the book. He didn't want to worry about the outside too.

He locked the door so he could sleep in the chair beside her, between her and the door, and feel she was as safe as she could possibly be. If she made any noise louder than a breath, he would hear. He would wake. He would go to her. If anything attempted to make its way through the door; he would respond. He would destroy it.

No one questioned this of him. No one made fun of him for his obsession. Not yet. That would come when she finally woke up.

He looked forward to the day.

* * *

><p>Day nine and a new mage answering their plea for help. This one was not only a solid script mage but also a professed expert in Rotan and Hibbiti history. Finally, their needs were met, and she would be saved.<p>

The foreign mage spent an hour with her. Studying the book. The various enchantments layered around it, on it, in it; around her, on her, in her. Then the mage turned back to the rest of them and made his proclamation. The book, as discovered earlier, was convinced she was a missing part of itself that needed to be ingested. The cure was to convince it that she was not what it needed.

In other words, as he had said before, convince the stupid packet of pages that she wasn't a freaking goddess. They'd tried that and it hadn't worked.

'No, no,' the mage insisted, 'you don't convince the book that it is wrong; you _make _it wrong. Make her not what it wants.'

That stirred up a host of confusion. Since the bookworm was obviously not a daughter of a Rotan earth goddess that should already be true, but further discussion revealed other elements. The book wanted a daughter. Probably a young girl. A magician. Wanted someone attuned to it, in certain ways. The mage gave an ironic smile and told them it was odd they hadn't considered the relevance of fairy tales before this. That a lot of these things were wrapped up in the captured being unkissed virgins, and that was usually the easiest way to free them.

Bunny girl shook her head. She'd been kissed before.

The mage prompted them with questions of virginity. It was all he could do to keep his hands at his side and not in the soft flesh of the bastard's rotten brain. The fucking scholar was attempting to help. He didn't actually know her. He didn't know their guild. He didn't realize he was about to get his goddamned head ripped off and shoved so far up his ass that he could read the vile idiocy writ on his heart.

But he didn't even have to say anything. The sword woman with her overwhelming sense of righteousness was on her feet and yelling before the suggestion had finished leaving the man's mouth. Did he mean for them to … to relieve her of her virginity while she was unconscious? To rape her?

If the only other option was the book devouring her because it saw her as a descendant and acolyte...

'And we're sure virginity is what's needed to take her? Nothing else?' he said, hands clenched and pierced arms crossed, from his chair in the corner.

The man temporized, eyes cut to the left, and it was the hand-cutting argument all over again. Like the shadow of death he rose from his seat and loomed over the gathered crowd. He commanded that no one, _no one_, would touch her while he was alive to kill them for trying. And then turned to follow the path that would take him back to her side.

Then he stopped.

Silver and gold.

Silver and gold. The smell had haunted him, but there had been no jewelry. Silver and gold. The scent of every other metal he had understood. The clothes. The glasses. The headband. The chain mail. The bronze. But not the silver and gold.

'What,' he asked the scholar, 'does silver and gold have to do with this goddess?'

The earth goddess, he was told, is always naked, except for a scrap of cloth, silver and gold, worn on a tie around her neck. To remind her of the greed of humanity that digs holes into her flesh, which she can never be rid of.

The kid, bunny-girl, and two other healers leapt from their seats. Burned with the hot iron of words. The bunny whispered of underwear before flying past him to the room.

Underwear?

Silver and gold.

Something cracked. She was almost home. This was it.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> And there's chapter 4. Looks like things are cooking with gas now. One, maybe two chapters left. Levy should finish things, but I'm considering an Omake chapter called Extra Levels: Level Zero that might up the rating to M, if you get my drift. ::winks::. As always, thanks for past reviews and thanks in advance for any reviews forthcoming.


	5. Level Five

Plans and Execution

Level Five

The story repeated itself many times.

She discovered that it stayed on the woman's ancestors, her matrilineal family line, and focused on a few women of import. Either of history itself, or because they had some sort of close relation to the woman in terms of personality or gift.

She found herself most interested in the woman's mother, the blacksmith. A very determined person. Closed off, but with a smile as hard as the anvil and hammer she worked with daily. Everytime the blacksmith looped around, she couldn't help but notice the size of her arms, as big around as her own waist. Strong. Powerful.

And the smile. That smile. It strengthened her resolve. Reminded her of another hard smile. A unique laugh. A reason to get out of this place and return to where she belonged.

Otherwise she did what she could to ignore the events as they unfolded around her. There was no way to stop the abuse. The death. The sadness. The words as they echoed in her bones and sucked away minute measures of her spirit, so she ignored them and instead focused on her magic.

Speed was important. She could only withstand the power of the story so many times before it took her. Already she felt it leeching away at her, but the spell she wove also grew stronger, and it protected her as it could.

Her job was to turn the book back into a biography of a dying mother to a grieving daughter. To undo the warping that had created a massively powerful tome that considered itself an almost sentient extension of truth.

Unfortunately, the first step made the book more dangerous.

Hooks of her magic endowed the story with "Life" and "History" and "Truth" of a different kind. Not universal truth, but the truth of telling. The truth of a biography.

The story-time slowed dramatically. She was no longer subjected to the birth of the world and the beginning of human history, but only the birth of a small girlchild and her life. But now she felt the heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter.

The snag of gold and silver thread woven through fine white linen.

Loneliness.

The touch of rain, and the smell of wet earth.

The flush of warmth as a man touched her skin. Lay over her. Sweat and passion.

The nausea and stretching of a child growing within her. The pain of feet and fists. The shame of failure, and the rage of the unfairly condemned.

Labor. Love. Love. Love. Love.

Jealousy and fear and love. Never wanting that which she loved to be hurt as she was.

Pain. Pain and regret. Regret and love.

Death.

By making the story about the woman and not about the faith, she had connected herself more completely to her. Lived with her. Died with her, and with each death it was harder to continue her spell casting. To push her plan forward.

But her plan was sound, and she did not want to die that final death. Did not want to feel those feelings of pain, regret, and death alone in her own flesh, so she fought to complete the spell that would break the bindings the book had cast upon her.

* * *

><p>Eight times she had died with the woman in the forest. She wasn't sure how many more she could take. But she was almost there. Almost done. Almost free. She could tell in the color of the grass between loops. In the cloudless and starless sky. In the way the words shook her less with each new condition she enforced. Each line of language she altered.<p>

Step two wrote the differences between herself and the woman in the environment of the story. Her happiness. Her friendships. The texture of her magic. Her shy naivety. (Though that one was admittedly shaky after going through conception and birth of a daughter seven times.) The foreignness of her appearance and clothing.

Her life.

She painted the lines and curves of her name into the sky, and carved the beauty of her guild symbol into the fresh earth.

And then a miracle touched her. In a flash her body was stripped of both panties and bra. She could still feel the chain mail. The soft fall of the blouse. The rough texture of the corduroy shorts.

But the silver and gold was absent. A haze fell between her and the world around. She could see, but everything was dulled.

One more time. One more loop through the woman's story, but this time when she died freedom, not the trap, would follow.

* * *

><p><strong>History is three things. Life is only one. Don't be only words on a page, my darling. Go rejoin the world I kept you from. Write your story next to mine, but live your life. Don't flee from it as I did.<strong>

This time the woman's words did not ring through her, but were a mere whisper in her mind as other sounds circled her. Other pressures and pains touched her.

She had a headache.

She heard crying.

Someone was calling her name.

The haze cleared and she saw. She _saw_. She was back. She was home.

**Go rejoin the world I kept you from … live your life … don't flee from it …**

Her best friend was practically in her lap, hugging her. Tears and smiles surrounded her, but she didn't care. Horrible as that was; they weren't what she wanted. What she wanted was across the small room. Against the wall. Arms crossed, piercings glinting, eyes shadowed, emotions unknown.

Well. She said she would be brave. That she wouldn't rely on strategies. That he was the reason she wanted, needed to return. There was no need to wait.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, mouth open. She told him, in full view of every witness, that she loved him. Then she laughed and, over a buxom blond's head, wrote the world 'truth' three feet high to fill the over-crowded room.

It could have been bigger, if the room was. Twelve stories high and a mile wide.

She thought he might have collapsed if there wasn't a wall holding him up. But then he did something she hadn't quite expected. He recovered. He smirked.

'Silver and gold.'

Her cheeks warmed. So that's why they'd disappeared. He'd discovered them. Well, that was what they were for … she couldn't fault him. The flush deepened, and she couldn't help but laugh again. 'Exactly.'

The rest of the people in the room had yet to recover.

* * *

><p>It took a while for everyone else to clear out of the room. She wasn't sure if it was her being back, and the happiness in that, or her declaration, and their concern for her mental stability. But they did leave. Eventually. All of them. Even her partners. Even the Master.<p>

Everyone but him.

He kept to his spot by the wall, even though the absence of others had opened up several chairs that were all closer to her. Patience, she told herself. Patience. He had yet to say no. And he hadn't left. She could not read the emotions on his face, but he was still there. That was a good sign.

It took her very little time to realize he wasn't going to make overtures. He expected it all to come from her. She had started the whole mess, after all. From new buttons to grand declarations, she had been the author of this play, and he expected her to continue writing it. It was anticipation that gleamed in his eyes and twitched in the curl of his lips.

So she would go off plan. But she had contingencies in place. Any good strategist would make such preparations. She lifted the book off of the bed beside her, the book she'd let no one take from her, and put it in her lap. Then she looked across the room, into those waiting eyes, and asked him to take her home.

Level zero.

She bit her lip and steeled her courage, but he only nodded.

And a nod wasn't no.

He lifted her from the bed easily. His arms were hard, and the flat rivets in his forearms pressed against her back and thighs. Reminding her in the most unsubtle and untimely way that her underwear had been removed to release her from the book's spell. And nothing had been done to replace it.

She curled her head down, and leaned it against his chest in an attempt to hide the blush that consumed her entire body.

There was a fluttering in the ear pressed to his chest. She thought he might be laughing at her, but there was no way she'd look up to see. With closed eyes, she felt the momentum as he turned and left the room. She counted steps as they exited the back of the guild, knowing by the number of steps he was taking in small hallways that he was leaving through a back door and not through the main hall.

She appreciated that; she didn't want to go through a riot just to get home.

He seemed to have a very good knowledge of the alleyways in their city, and she was surprised to learn he already knew where she lived. It was an easy, if winding, trip to her apartment. She considered, as he walked her up the stairs to her rooms, telling him that she could walk for herself, but it was obvious that neither his back, legs, or arms found her weight to be a strain on his strength.

Book tucked into her stomach, they reached her door, and she did ask him to put her down. No one had told her how long she'd been gone, though someone had said days. She wouldn't have been surprised if it were years. She wouldn't have been surprised if it were moments. But she was happy that her key was still in her pocket.

With fingers that absolutely did _not_ tremble, she opened the door.

It felt like a twisted parody of the last time she came home. The book on the shelf next to the door. His silent presence behind her, like he wasn't there, but there was no way he could be ignored. She wanted to follow that memory. Strip her clothes. Turn on the bath. But she couldn't. Not yet.

She swallowed. Lowered her head. Raised her head. Turned. She told him that, though she didn't know how many days she'd been out, the fact that it was days made her feel a little disgusting, and cleaning spells aside, she needed a bath. She wasn't sure how good he was in a kitchen, but she had plenty of ready made foodstuffs in her cupboards that could be put together with little trouble. She was sure he was capable.

If he could do that while she bathed, she would be extremely grateful.

He looked her up and down and up again. Her lip found its way between her teeth. She fought back the word 'please'. She would not beg. Either he wanted to do this for her, or he did not.

His eyelids drooped and this smirk was back on his mouth. Leaning forward, his eyes steady, and his nose inches from her own, he told her that nothing beat him, not even a kitchen. He'd be fine.

Thinking that it was a very _him_ thing to relate cooking to battle, she smiled and walked as quickly as her tired muscles allowed her to her bathroom where her large copper soaking tub waited for her.

* * *

><p>Author's Note: So I decided to go with 6 chapters, making it even. Probably, with my style being as vague as it is, I can pull off an love scene without sliding into Mature Content territory, but we'll see. If I feel I have to write something that knocks up the rating to M, I'll post it as it's own story, and put a link in this one. Thanks for all the reviews, especially those of you who are keeping up with every chapter. I'm not pointing out people in AN's because I'm replying to reviews that should be going to your inboxes.<p> 


	6. Level Six

Plans and Execution

Level Six

She had a lot of quirks, was all he could manage when he finally discovered the origin of the precious metal scents. Panties and a bra.

He'd expected the removal of the connection, the silver and gold, to result in some sort of divine occurrence. For her immediate release. Instead the only effect seemed to be his erection. Not the most uncommon reaction when it came to her, but not the one he wanted currently.

And he had to admit, this was something on a whole new level because suddenly he was looking back on things and asking some very serious questions. There were excuses for the rest of it, but no one bought underwear made of materials that expensive unless they had plans for them.

And who the hell else would they appeal to?

And could he kill that someone else? Or at least beat the miserable bug into a pulp?

Was there someone else?

Had her kindness morphed into something else when he wasn't paying enough attention? Doing everything he could _not _to notice her every move? He wasn't exactly an expert on human emotions. He suspected that in an effort not to do something he'd regret, he'd missed and misread all the signs that would have explained her to him.

It was another full cycle of the 20 hour loop before she came back into herself. He knew she was there before the others in the way the quality of the air around her changed. Tho the air kid would be better at that. And the flaming asshole would know by the difference in her temperature. With him … it was some of that, but more. The pulse he watched so carefully on her left wrist over the book pushed against her skin a little harder than it had before.

Her lower lip pushed outward with a breath.

And her toes curled.

And then she was there. Her eyes were _open_ and her mouth was moving. People leapt for her. From all over the room, people were falling over themselves to be near her. He wanted to be one of them, but he couldn't be. He'd been in the middle of these people before, barfight after barfight, but never in such a happy sort of brawl.

He hadn't earned his place in this pansyass sort of mob, yet.

Quick words were spoken. Some loud. Some quiet. Then what he'd never expected, though he'd wanted it since that first sign of waking, happened; she looked at him. Directly at him. At no one but him. As if no one else was there. Or maybe as if she didn't care if they were there, but she wasn't the type of person to simply not give a shit.

She knew, but for the moment they were not high priorities to her. He was. And then she opened her mouth and told him why.

Why.

His mind went black. That word. Did... had anyone, before ...

Sure. Sure. With the underwear … but she hadn't used soft or easy words … the bitch said _love_. Did she even know …

But then with a wave of her hand and the smell of her magic, a solid script word appeared before him.

Of course she knew. She always knew. Maybe he didn't understand why, or how, she could forgive him or feel that way or say shit like that out loud, but that was because _he_ was a fucking idiot. He always was. She was incredible.

If she said it, it was true.

And anyway, there was the silver and gold backing her up, after all. What could he do but smile back at her?

* * *

><p>Most of the shit everyone talked about was completely unimportant. No one asked her the questions he really wanted answers to like: What the fuck happened with the book dammit? And there was very little argument raised about her unwillingness to part with the thing. She offered the briefest assurances that nothing would go wrong with it anymore, and that it was still her book, and that she was the best person to keep it as she understood it now better than anyone else.<p>

All of which was true, and again he was sure she knew what she was talking about better than someone like him, but still … something so dangerous, something that hurt you like that, caused you so much pain … do you hold on to it when it could ...?

It took him maybe a _little _too fucking long to realize the irony in that question. Fucking great thing he wasn't stupid enough to say that shit out loud!

One by one, or two by two if you count the weird-hat (hair? No, he didn't give a shit) morons, the others left them. And then they were alone. He wasn't sure what to expect of her, but he was pretty fucking sure that almost anything he said or did would be wrong. He wasn't exactly the type to …

A fight sure. He was a great partner in a fight. Fucking amazing alone in a fight too. And he _wanted_, damn right he wanted her. But there was a difference, a vast fucking planet size difference in wanting and actually getting. In feeling the illusion of her hands on him while he slept and watching her look at him and know that that illusion could be made real.

It was a difference that could not even be described.

So regardless of his wants, she was the one who could actually articulate things, so he'd leave that part up to her. He needed to decide how to respond to … to all this. So when she asked him to take her home, he nodded. It was a good chance to think. To gather his scattered wits.

And then at the end of the course, he'd be in a good place for other things.

* * *

><p>He found something more-than-pleasant about the prolonged contact with her bare skin. No bullshit life and death issues now; just him carrying her home because she was a little worn out. And as payment for services he would have done for free, his forearm rested high on thighs topped by what really couldn't even be called shorts. Hot as that flaming idiot in the knowledge that the shorts were it; there was nothing else. The underwear was gone.<p>

His feet followed a safe path to her home. One he didn't even have to direct; he'd passed by often enough. He'd heard a few of the women in the guild mention she'd moved out on her own, and he made it his business to find out where and walk by occasionally. Never know, right? It was possible she might have needed him at some point.

He never really worked hard to justify that to himself. He did it; he accepted it. If he thought too hard about shit like that he couldn't move forward. And he was generally at his best when moving forward. Her head lifted briefly from his chest when he reached the stairs of her building, but then settled back down until he got her a few more measly floors up to her door.

Honestly he could have unlocked it too, there was no need for her get down, but he didn't want to completely freak her more than he already did. Breaking into her apartment with a legspike key might be one step too many at a time when she was facing a lot.

The door unsealed and air swept around her, and he wondered again what the air dragon would read in the situation. It felt to him like an empty space opening up for the thing that would fill it; like the apartment had missed her as much as the rest of them had.

It didn't smell like his place, which was even more stale for lack of interest and didn't have half as much soft cotton shit. And she didn't have as much metal. It made sense that she didn't have as much metal. But she had more than she needed.

It hardened the smirk on his face and made it difficult as all hell to let her go mess around in a bathtub alone and naked while he bothered with _food_. Not even food worth eating.

Nonchalant. It was a word his dragon taught him years and years and years ago when he was as short as the girl in the bathtub; the girl who he was vigorously _not_ thinking about being _in_ a bathtub. In any fight tactics succeeded or failed on timing. He wouldn't lose because he got ahead of himself.

Nonchalant. His dragon, his father really, told him that the best defense a dragon had was the appearance of uncaring. Nonchalance. As if everything were below it because everything _should_ be below it. A dragon ruled the sky and devoured anything it wished. But of course, young dragons could be killed. And soft, human dragonslayers might meet up with things that could kill them. The appearance that nothing, no matter how powerful, moved them to fear was a great defense. A life-saving defense.

Even if there were times that it was nothing more than an appearance.

It was also a habit-forming defense. In cases that had nothing to do with anger or active fighting, he showed his indifferent face. And that was when he was a boy. Now it wasn't a face. He was simply indifferent or unaware of how to act in any situation that did not involve his iron ram deep in someone's skull.

Things that actually moved him, that actually could still move him deeply, he was at a loss at how to react. Most of the time he gave way to pure fuckall instinct, and that seemed to work. But with her, where he was most moved and where things most mattered, he'd probably need something more than instinct.

Which was usually anger and a fist in the face anyway. And how would that translate in this situation?

Oh.

His hands stopped their movement as they threw together random foodstuffs.

Shit no. That was the worst possible way he could handle this. This. This required control and some fucking understanding of what the hell he'd gotten himself into. And softness. He'd never really been good with softness, but no matter how much that girl said she loved him … well, she was still a girl wasn't she? They all wanted kindness and softness now and then; that's what girlyshit meant. And on top of that she was a tiny, tiny girl.

Softness might not just be something she wanted occasionally, but something he had to provide. He'd freaking proved that even with those two maggots crawling around her, he had the power and strength to kill her. That power and strength didn't disappear, he'd only turned it so that he used it for her instead of against her. But if this moved forward... that power would be against her.

Against her.

Damn.

It really was impossible to let go of the naked-in-the-bath image. He shifted from one foot to the other, unwilling to adjust himself in case touching made it worse.

From the other side of the apartment came the slide of a metal tongue entering a doorknob's sheath. A crack and he felt the phantom warmth leftover from her bath. And he smelled the copper. At first he thought; well, he didn't think anything. He'd smelled copper around her before.

But then it sunk through the haze of want. It was too much copper for her glasses. Too much copper for anything. It was all copper and warmth and hot water and her. He followed the scent of it like it was a spell that he had no means of fighting.

Never true. He was a dragon. He could always fight.

Still, his feet moved without his brain getting a say – not that this was a new thing, really – until he was there. Facing her. While she floated in that amazingly large copper basin. Hair spread out around her. Smirk shadowing the corner of her mouth like she'd ripped it off his face.

'It's b-beautiful, isn't it?' her soft voice hovered somewhere between them, caught in the steamy air. He had an instant where he didn't understand her brazenness, but with the stutter … she was scared of him, but not in the way she used to be.

All he could do was stare. That she'd asked him a question ….

Didn't faze him.

Some tiny fraction of her smile wavered. He shook himself. What had he been doing. The smile was back, brighter than before. Much brighter. Her writing hand and the hand only recently freed from a book were sliding back and forth in the water. Touching her own skin; knees, hips, chest.

"You told me once," the hands lifted, and the fingers tapped softly on the rim of the copper tub, "to get stronger." There was a tremble in the back of her voice that maybe no one else would have heard, and her eyes were searching for something in his. "To fight seriously with you."

He must have done something, made some physical sign that told her he agreed.

"I think I just won."

For a second time all he could do was stare, but this time it wasn't the soft curve of her tits that filled his head, but those words. They echoed in his scull. Rattling like a bolt in a tin can. _Won, won, won, won, won, think-I-just, I-think, I-think, I-think-I-just-won, won, won. _Shaken at the rhythm of her laughter.

She was going to make him enjoy the idea of losing. And he _hated_ losing.

He took a heavy step, his iron-weighted boot making a loud sound against the tile floor, followed by another to loom over her and the tub. So she'd won; he wouldn't make it that easy on her. He wondered what panic would taste like on wet skin. He grinned down at her and heard her heart rate double.

It felt like a forever long way to reach down, but he put his hand between her ankles and pulled the stopper in the drain. He couldn't fit in the fucking tub with her, so she sure as shit wasn't going to stay there. He stood and watched her body as the water tried with futile effort to cling to her and stay with her. She sat and watched him watching her.

She was no longer smiling. Her mouth had fallen open and she was panting quietly. Her eyes. Her eyes still searched, but there was a growing light there. Something like …

Anticipation.

He gritted his teeth. Shit. It wasn't like he wasn't having problems before. His reactions to her were as blatant as they could be with pants and a tunic still covering him.

He grabbed her hands and helped her to stand. Reached for a towel. Dried her off.

He started with her hair. Then each ear. Her eyebrows. Nose. Cheeks. Lips.

He kissed her. But only once.

He didn't like to lose. He wouldn't make it easy.

He ran the towel down the long curve of her back. Around the sharp point of her hip and up the flat of her stomach. Over her chest. To her neck.

And he kissed her again. She sounds of her gasps and moans were punctuated in his ears by the light clicks of his studs against his teeth and hers. Her eyes still glowed. Anticipation and maybe even more of a certainty that she had defeated him.

Another long look as he stood tall above her, and gave her a shit-eating grin. She wanted to be the winner, he'd see if she had the balls for it. Careful of the long bolts on his boots and never letting go of the eye contact, he lowered himself to his knees in front of her and dried her legs.

First the left. Down the thigh, the calf. Up the calf. Up the thigh. Between. Then the right.

He kept his eyes on her eyes. Somehow managing to avoid the boulder-huge temptation of her breasts. Not an easy job with the way they were heaving right in front of his face, but he was tough. He slipped an arm around her ass and lifted her as he stood.

Just to be safe – to make sure he wasn't moving too fast or rushing into something she didn't really want – he asked if she wanted any of the food he'd wasted his damn time putting together. Her head barely shook. He grinned.

"Say the word," he commanded her.

The whispered breath of her 'no' curled around his face, and even he could barely hear the sound. The darkness in her eyes and roundness of her lips was all that kept him from gobbling her up right then and there. Just a little more and he had her. Maybe she won the first part, but this would be a draw.

"Are you hungry?" he asked with his mouth closer to her throat. Under her ear. Too near to her chest.

She licked her lips opened her mouth. He already knew what she would say. She would say yes … but then he felt the stray finger tracing the piercings on the arm that was cradling her, and the subtle shift of her leg against his thigh. That cunning smile turned into his mouth. And she said something that, despite everything that came before, he never expected to hear from her:

"Are you?"

Oh yeah. He was really going to enjoy losing to this bookworm. Why did walking to the bedroom take so much goddamn time?

* * *

><p>He woke with her tucked into his midsection. For one stupid second he thought his cat had grown tits and a nice round ass, but that was a tiny second. No one had an ass like hers. But the very idea of that ass on his cat gave him a fit of laughter.<p>

That laughter woke her up. It was nice, being the first thing she looked at when she opened those big eyes. They were clear and welcoming and wanting. She sure as shit wasn't lying about getting stronger and fighting him.

He put his mouth to her ear so he didn't have to face those eyes. He knew what she wanted to say, but he couldn't respond with the right words yet. So he jumped out in front:

"Before. I told you you were incredible. I didn't know a damn thing when I said that. I know now. You might know words big enough for what you are, but I don't. Way more than incredible. More than amazing."

He felt her lips curl in his hair, and she told him she loved him again.

He laughed and pulled her closer. "That's one of those amazing things. It seems like an impossible feat, but I'm not surprised it's you that did it."

She asked him to stay with her, and he tilted his head so she could see him grin. "We're both mages of Fairy Tail. Where else would I go?"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>So. This is the end. I struggled at the tail end there with how corney to go. Gajeel being Gajeel, he has potential to be disgustingly corney (see: singing, crying over cat, hugging cat after brawl while sleeping), but at the same time, he's still emotionally reserved. So I went somewhere in the middle. I'll do some sort of attachment if I go with an extra mature chapter, but I was happy with what I had here, so I probably won't. I want to thank everyone for reading, especially those people who kept up the past few days and reviewed on multiple chapters. It really kept me going. I appreciated it more than I can say! Thanks everyone! PLEASE REVIEW!


	7. Extra Levels  Level Seven

Plans and Execution

Extra Levels – 6+1=7

She used to think of her bed as big before she started sharing it with him.

If they were both in town, not on missions, then they shared her bed. Their bed. Just the thought of those two words together sent cold chills up her spine and around … around lower areas best not mentioned in public.

He still kept his old place for storage, and her two or three visits to the place assured her that was for the best. There wasn't really room for all his scrap metal and all her books in the same small space. They'd need something far larger than either of them had.

Someday, maybe, but she remained more than slightly awestruck that she'd made it as far as she had. She didn't need more from him. She felt blessed that she'd gotten what she did.

But she couldn't help but think her bed was a _bit_ too small for her, a dragon, and a cat. Not that Lily crashed with them often. Usually if he bunked down in her house, he used the futon she made for him on the big couch in her reading area.

But then there were the times that cat and man felt it necessary to drink. And by "drink" she meant _drink_. There was absolutely no explaining how a tiny cat managed to hold that much alcohol, but he did. And the dragon managed ten times as much. There didn't seem to be a set pattern in their drinking habits. Sometimes they drank for happy reasons, other times they seemed to drink purely for the destruction they could cause while teetering on the edge of consciousness, and still other times it was obvious they were brooding.

It was one area they were truly unpredictable. And it didn't happen so often. But when it did, she wrote "float" into the air, pushed him and his cat on, and towed the two of them home. They both had a tenancy to pass out suddenly and with little in-between. One second he'd be roaring at someone and the next he'd be face first on the bar.

The cat was even worse because he lacked the bluster. She almost always missed him when he went down. She'd find him somewhere under the bar, tucked inside the legs of a bar stool, after his large, snoring, pierced counterpart was safe on her floating "float". She'd roll her eyes, pick up the poor fluffball, and put him next to his partner.

She could, she supposed, separate the two of them. Put her lover on the bed and his cat on the couch, but it always felt wrong. And by that time they were all cuddled up together, pink cheeked and snoring. She loved watching them like that.

She could, she supposed, take the couch herself and leave them the bed. But that was far too lonely. Even with all the trouble they caused rolling over her in their drunken sleep, she preferred to be near to them. Near to him. So he was heavy, and after a few drinks they were loud. She would rather have them near than be anywhere else.

As guild mages they had missions. Always missions. Sometimes they were away more often than they were home. It was important to her – so important – the time they had together. So she bore with the pressure of being shoved up against the wall by a large man and his small cat. Because it was worth it. Because she loved them.

* * *

><p>She was quiet when she puttered around, waiting for them to wake. As was often the case on these long mornings when they were sleeping off a hangover, she turned to her books. This morning it was <em>the<em> book that called to her. She'd spent many months untying the knot of magic that had coiled around the leather and paper.

Now she was working on transferring the story to a new binding. Softer spells, translated language. Nothing to hide any sleeping Rotan curses. And then she would do as the mother ordered; she would write her own story on those pages. Continue the tradition of passing on her history to her daughter.

She alternated between writing her story by hand and writing with her spell pen. The spell pen translated faster, but the handwriting broke up the magic. Another safeguard. She was doing what she could to ensure that this new book she made would never trap someone like she had been trapped.

She smiled as her fingers traced the curled handwriting. Pride glowed in her. She'd once told her best friend and aspiring writer, that she wanted to read other people's work, not write her own. She was convinced she hadn't the talent for it. But it turned out she was wrong. She lived the lives of the women in the book, and she could still see their joys and their sorrows behind the thin skin of her eyelids.

It was a surprise to her how easy it was to put those images into modern script. Even writing the beginnings of her own story was a smooth process. Maybe she couldn't write epic tales of fiction, but it seemed she was more than capable of making history interesting.

She knew he woke before she felt his fingers in her hair. He was quiet. Silent. But the air was always charged with danger when he was awake, alert, and focused on you. Even before he stood directly behind her, she could feel the sweep of his eyes on her.

Then his hand in her hair. Pulling at the cloth headband and throwing it to the ground. Uncaring. Uninterested. Wanting more of her and less of it. She smiled at the thick paper in front of her and ignored him as his other hand tripped, feather light, along the bare skin of her arm. When his fingers reached the ends of hers, he pulled the pen away from her and pushed the bookmaking materials away.

"I don't like that you still mess with that fucking book," he told her.

"I don't like that you get too drunk to walk home on your own power. A whole night without any attention. No, I don't like that at all." She was smiling at the hand, his hand, as it came to her chest and began to unbutton her shirt.

His response came to her in broken pieces, spoken between the kisses he was placing carefully along her shoulder blades. "Told you ... how ... t'get my attention … long time ... ago, Shrimp."

"I'm afraid your ego can't handle me beating you as often as I want your eyes and hands and mouth on me and nothing else."

Her own hands never moved. They were quiet and still, fingers brushing the smooth glossy surface of the wood table. She wanted to turn to him. Wanted to touch him like he was touching her, but she would make him wait.

She wondered if she'd ever be rid of the fear of her own dullness. The fear that one day he'd walk up behind her and decide he'd wasted enough time on her and move on to something more exciting. To fight of the fear that such a day was inevitable, she forced him to jump through hoops to please her. She knew him well enough to use frustration as a weapon of attraction.

And it was a weapon that worked both ways. Holding herself back from him made her want him all the more. In a matter of minutes her head was thrown back and she was gasping his name. A few more and her lips could not even form words. She was amorphous sound and a cluster of nerve endings. She existed to revel in his touch.

When she finally returned the favor his mouth was tilted upward in the cockiest of grins. She loved the look of it; loved how it pulled his long, thin nose. How it narrowed his eyes. How every part of him seemed to flash with mirth and male pride. Loved how the grin could be erased so quickly and replaced by his own gasps and moans.

She loved the leap of his adam's apple when her mouth dipped bellow his belt line. The way he showed his teeth when she bit his nipples. The way he held his breath when she rose above him. The feel of his hands on her softest parts. The touch of his tongue against her own.

She loved him, but she said it aloud as little as possible. She new it made him awkward. Words weren't his world, they were hers. He complimented her frequently, but _love_ was too big a word just yet.

When they were finished, they stretched out on the wooden floor. Hands lazily battling for dominance over each other's body. She asked him where his cat had gone. He told her that he had scheduled a solo job that would take him to the Exceed settlement.

She was glad he was visiting them. They were his family after all. His people.

She shivered. The fingers crawling up her hip were becoming more bold. Less lazy. A quick glance up, followed by a quicker glance down, confirmed that the afterglow had passed. She really wasn't sure why she remained so afraid for their future together; he never demonstrated anything but want for her.

His desire fed her, kept her alive, kept her … kept her his. This was how things were supposed to be. She hoped her days would continue like this for always.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Not sure why I felt the need to do this. It was another love scene without actual information, but I felt compelled for some reason to give a chapter showing it wasn't a one time only thing. That the book was being fixed, and Levy and Gajeel are doing alright. Not sure why. Hope no one minds.


	8. Extra Levels  Level Eight

Plans and Execution

Extra Levels – 6+2=8

"Shit!"

The explosion was massive and threw him back what felt like half a kilometer. The bastard was good, better than he expected, and better than the capture price on the job posting. Anyone with half an ounce of sanity would drop the hell out of this gig and high tail it back home where he had a sweet piece of brains and ass waiting for him.

But this was war now. This fucker had pushed the wrong buttons. He was excited. Less a job and more a game, he was laughing as he crawled off his back. He wanted to eat this bastard alive, absorb his power, and roar with his victory.

His cat didn't seem quite so eager. He was riding more along the lines of rolling his eyes and prepping to guard from any rear attack. Practical shit.

They'd been chasing this rogue, non-guild magician for the better part of two weeks. The initial task of finding him was difficult enough, but even after they'd located him, subduing him was proving absolutely impossible. His magic dealt with pressure; that was as much as they'd managed to discover about him. Any kind of pressure, controlling air pressure allowed him to fly, controlling the pressure of mass allowed him to blow shit up that shouldn't rightfully be capable of combustion without some sort of fuel.

So they found him and lost him three times. This was the fourth time finding him in over a week and a half, and though in someways he felt the chase was getting old... in other ways he hadn't had so much fun since Edolas. No one he cared about was truly at risk here, and though the bastard was wily, he was hardly badass enough to do him _or_ his cat serious harm.

It was a challenge that had stretched on a little longer than intended but was not an actual problem. Except for the not insignificant fact that he kinda wanted to get back to the girl with the sweet ass who was probably no longer patiently waiting for him.

So as much fun as he was having, it was time to wrap this shit up.

* * *

><p>It was another three days of fights and chasing before he was able to knock the inconsiderate ass out and turn him in to the nearest prison. The pay was pitiful considering the amount of work he put into the mission, and even his cat was disappointed in the lack of financial return in their time investment.<p>

The cat's phrasing, not his.

As much as he disliked trains, or was frustrated by trains, it was still the fastest way to get back. A day of travel was all it took. He did have a moment of hesitation at the station; directly to the guild, or should he go to see his girl.

The shinigami messenger from the Master's son made his decision for him. It was annoying that the vile, self-righteous, massively insecure bastard always found him with so little trouble.

'I mean seriously,' he scoffed to himself, '_Raven _Tail? Could it be more obvious that he's compensating for being abandoned by his cruel daddy?'

And the orders. The damn orders. A month at the guild getting final information for the moron's hostile takeover. He had any number of problems with that load of crap. The first problem being he hadn't seen any pay for the information he'd given in over two months. A month at base with no jobs, what the fuck was he supposed to do? He still had rent on his room to pay for! He had to feed himself somehow.

He'd have to talk the Master into giving him some sort of pay. Otherwise he was either going to empty his backlog of iron scraps or rely on his tiny little woman to take care of him. Like hell. What the shit kinda man would he be if he let her do all the work? It was probably bad enough that he basically moved in with her. He had to pull his own weight.

Besides it wouldn't just be him, it would be him and the cat. She'd have two dependents, three people resting on those narrow shoulders. It was too much.

He'd never asked for compensation for his double agent work, but for this month he might have to go begging to the old man. He had some savings, but even scrap metal was pricy, and he didn't have a whole lot of choices about whether he should or should not spend his money on iron. It was either buy iron or starve to death.

He had to physically restrain himself from ripping the paper messenger to shreds. And it was getting harder and harder to maintain a carefree and gleeful expression at the bastard's words. Not only was he supposed to pass on every scrap of information he could lay his shiny silver fingertips on during the month, but the Master's son also wanted him to do everything in his power to weaken the guild's defenses.

The level of hate this man had for his father really was staggering.

It was a hard walk to the guild. His cat at his side throwing him sidelong glances, unsure of how things were going to play out between the two guilds. And even more unsure of where the two of them would fall when the shit hit the fan. Completely understandable. If the old man had him continue the ruse up until the final moment … how would she respond?

How would any of them respond?

We she trust him despite the evidence in front of her, or would she instead remember that it was less than a year since his arm sported a Phantom tattoo. Would she remember the things he'd done to them when his membership and loyalty was given to a different master? Would she remember that he had stamped her with a Phantom tattoo after bolting her to a tree?

She loved him, but would she trust him when he was putting spikes in the guild roof again?

* * *

><p>He snuck in the back way. No need to make it common knowledge that the first thing he did after a mission was check in with the boss. His relationship with the Master needed to appear no different from anyone elses. He shouldn't seem as close as the ones who'd been around for forever either, and the frequency that they talked would seriously screw that image.<p>

Usually he and his cat parted for these meetings. The double agent thing was an agreement between him and the Master from before he'd gotten himself a cat. Not that he hadn't told him everything; they were partners, he deserved to know and be prepared for the shit storm such a job was likely to cause. But in the end it was _his_ job, a solo job.

As lonely as that made him feel anymore.

The two of them climbed the back staircase together to catch the old man in a late afternoon nap. Grumpy as always at being woken up (especially by someone without tits; the old fart was – spirit world help him – an unabashed pervert); he managed to calm down after being told the news. One month to prepare.

It was plenty of time, really, to be ready for the dark guild. The biggest problem would be keeping the council out of their assholes long enough to take care of the situation. And then keeping the council pacified enough that they didn't do something bitchy like try and disband them.

Finally, since the Master wasn't volunteering the information he really wanted, he had to break down and ask; "How long do I keep it up? When can I put my iron fist in that cocky jackass's mouth? When does he find out you were playing the longer game?"

The old man stared at the ceiling for a long time. Then with a blink and a flash of a smile, he began to outline his strategy for the coming month. Every guild member would be called home. Nothing would be done against Raven Tail until that lightening jerk could be found and brought back.

He wasn't the only one caught between the two guilds. He forgot that most of the time. The fake lightening dragon slayer was grandson to one guild master and son to the other. A damn uncomfortable place to be. At least _he_ only really gave a shit about one of the guilds. At least he was faking the connection with Raven Tail.

Then his cat asked the question, the favor, he really wanted to ask himself since … well forever. His cat asked the Master if they could tell _her_. They lived too close together, he argued, and it was too much trouble to lie to her.

"He won't be able to pull it off for a month solid. It's either tell her or he's got to dump her, and really they've both suffered enough for this relationship."

Again the old man looked away, seemingly entranced by the wall. "That child has endured more than many others, and if she's aware of what's going on she could probably be helpful to you. You made an okay team in the exam. You were maybe a little too impatient, and she maybe slightly insecure with regards to her own power, but the time you've spent together since has done something to mitigate both of those flaws in your partnership. So yes. Tell her."

'Tell her.'

He could tell her. She would understand. When the time came she wouldn't misunderstand and hate him. The fear wouldn't return and drive her away.

In his own head he had no problem admitting he was addicted to her. In his head. Out loud was still something more difficult. But when the lights were out and she wasn't tucked into bed next to him, he couldn't fathom how he would manage his life without her. What a fucking pointless waste of air and blood that would be.

Dismissed, he and his cat made their way to the main hall and more importantly the long bar. He'd have the devil chick pull him a pint, and then he'd tell the bookworm his nasty little secret.

* * *

><p>He <em>wasn't<em> shitfaced. But tipsy was a pussy word. He was drunk. His cat had slunk home an hour earlier, telling him that he needed to spend the night with her alone.

Not something he minded, a night alone with her, but he might mind this one. She'd be upset that he hadn't told her sooner. They were supposed to be in a relationship or some shit, and he hadn't given her his full trust. He'd withheld himself.

He stumbled from the building. She was at home; that's what the others told him. He should have gone to her sooner, but he hit the liquid courage a little hard. To reveal this secret he'd kept for so long … using _words_. He wasn't the best with words. So he drank and ate some of the metal shavings the devil woman had collected for him in hopes that intoxication would distract him from his nervousness.

Instead it made him want to hurl the last three meals he'd downed into the river.

His judgment was absolute crap sometimes.

The information from the others was right, though. He could smell her from where he was on the street through her open window. He couldn't stop his breathy chuckle in response to the girlish giggle he could hear. She was caught up in the world of one of her storybooks again. Completely distracted.

He would normally enter through the door like any other sane human being, but the opportunity was too choice to pass up. And it wasn't like it was a hardship for him to elongate his legs and reach up to her upper story window. Sneak in.

She was curled up in her big round chair by her largest bookcase. Her face turned away from him and the open window.

Wearing one of his spare tunics and not a damn thing else.

It wasn't so much that it was sexy – the damn thing was gigantic compared to her, more like an ugly-ass ball gown than a tunic – it was that the thing was _his_, and she made it a point to submerge herself in the heavy garment that was way too freaking big for her.

He lowered himself to all fours. For several reasons: To keep from falling on his face from the booze, to be quieter, to be less visible, so he wouldn't have to bend so damn far to kiss her. Like an evil kitty cat he stalked to her chair, prepared to pounce.

"Do you honestly think I'm that easy." She hadn't looked up from her book. Hadn't looked at him, but the smile on her face said loud and clear that she was happy to get the jump on him for once. She thrust her chin at the window, and he turned to look.

Goddamn enchantment. A rune spell to notify of intruders. Smart. And damn dumb of him not to realize that open window was one hell of a blatant trap.

Oh well. He'd been drinking after all. And it wasn't like he really gave a flying shit about win or lose with her. As long as he could possess her. As long as she was his.

Secrets first?

He'd been gone for two weeks. No company but a cat. He loved his cat, but shit, it wasn't like the cat was her. The 'v' collar of his tunic pointed deep into her cleavage. No. Secrets after.

He hated getting new clothes made, but he hadn't had her in too long. And he was destructive by nature. He crawled the meter to her and curled his fingers into the collar. He always used tough fabrics, but, when he ripped, the tunic tore with almost no resistance. As if it wanted to come off of her. Or like her body wanted to be rid of it; to be free.

She was wearing underwear with metallic thread again. Evil bitch. But the nausea was gone, leaving nothing but desire behind. Using lips, teeth, and tongue he removed those as well. They tasted like nickle and iron and steel and her sweat.

Her hands were buried in his hair, pulling back his head away from her stomach so that he'd kiss her. He could have resisted, but he wasn't that fucking idiotic. She made room for him on her big chair, and bit by bit he shifted her until she was in his lap. There in that chair that smelled of nothing but her, and with her rising, naked above him, he was drowning in her scent.

At that moment he was the center of a bookworm universe, where nothing existed but her, and - to a lesser extent - him. The high pitched gasps that cascaded from her mouth into the charged air raised goosebumps on his hard skin and made his balls coil in their need for more. Her chest heaved in front of his face, and the humidity in the room from the hot moisture was oppressive. It was hard to breathe the air was so hot and thick.

She caught his lower lip in her teeth and bit down hard. His eyes were wide as he watched her, fascinated at the rhythm of her body over his and turned on by her daring.

"You were gone too long," she said between gasps. "Promise you'll stay ... for a little while at least. Or take close, short jobs. Two weeks … two weeks without any word. I was worried."

It was an easy promise to make.

Guild war was coming. He wouldn't be going anywhere.

* * *

><p>He told her a few hours later in the bath. There was no real plan behind it, but his thinking was that if she were naked in a bath tub, relaxed, and caught in his arms, then she'd be less likely to go off without hearing the whole story.<p>

They didn't exactly fit comfortably in the copper tub, but they managed, and he'd found that he liked to be in that tub with her. Liked to clean her after he made her dirty. Liked to watch her shiver at his touch.

And she just looked fucking amazing wet.

So when he was running a soapy cloth down the short line of her body, he told her his story. How the Master tracked him down. How he'd also been scouted by the dark guilds. How the old man had been searching for his son, with no luck, and how they'd managed to help each other out. The Master let him into the guild, and he found Raven Tail's base.

That was as far as he got before she started laughing. Of all the reactions he had imagined, laughing didn't even cross his mind. And he hadn't told the whole thing either.

She turned in his arms, mirth in the corners of her eyes, and kissed him soundly. "I already know. I've known since right after the Battle of Fairy Tail. I overheard you and the Master talking about it, and then I made sure to hear you again the next time you talked. I'm smart; I put two and two together easily enough. The Master's son thinks you're his spy, but really you're ours."

"Yeah and he's attacking at the end of the month. I have to destroy the whole damn building for him, like I did when I was with Phantom. He wants … he wants me to do it exactly like I did it before."

The mirth faded. Her eyes bore deep into his. "I trust you. If you need to pin me to a tree again to keep your cover, that's okay. We'll tell the Master tomorrow."

He shook his head. She didn't understand; he wasn't going to take it that far. Even if it was fake, even if she were willing, there was no way in the 12 puppy-torturing levels of hell he'd pull that shit on her again. Maybe she _was_ strong enough to handle being bolted to a tree and tattooed again, emotionally.

But he sure as spirit shit was not.

"No way in hell. We'll beat the shit out of that pansy ass guild no problem without any games like that. I ain't never going to lay a hand on you again in any way that would hurt you. Or even look like it would hurt you." He eased his mouth over hers and stroked the curve of her lower back. "I don't even care if the old fart asks me to do it; I won't.

"I love you, Levy."

With his lips on her cheek and his fingers exploring the softness of her thigh, it felt like the most natural thing in the world to say. Like it had never been a problem for him in the past.

She went still on him. Her nails biting further into the muscles in his shoulders. He tasted salt in the dampness on her cheek. He licked his lips. In a small voice she asked him to say it again.

It was an easy gift to give her.

They'd have a month to come up with plans to destroy Raven Tail, but he wasn't worried. Their guild was packed to the gills with extraordinary mages of all sorts that the younger guild just couldn't match. But more than that, he didn't believe it was possible for them to lose.

He loved her. She was perfect. No punk ass exiled son with abandonment issues was going to fuck that up for him.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I seriously can't believe I did another one of these. It just fell out of me. But this does even things out again, 4 chapters for each of them. This should be it for this story. I hope. Damn. Thanks again to all the reviewers, and if you would please review this chapter? I love reviews!


End file.
